Description, Causal Explanation, and Policy Intervention in Sociology

Abstract I seek to restate and to develop a position I have previously taken up on the relation between description and causal explanation in sociology, in part by reference to an ongoing controversy on this matter in British sociology. I start out from the basic distinction between the causes of effects and the effects of causes, and from a more instructive controversy on the issues that arise that has occurred in epidemiology. Drawing on this, I emphasise three points: first, the importance of good description in sociology in its own right but also in establishing the social phenomena that call for explanation; second, the need for causal explanations to be given in terms of social processes or mechanisms, specified in terms of individual action and interaction which are capable of generating the explananda ; and third, the necessity of moving on from description to explanation in this way if sociology is to take up the actually increasing scope that exists for it to contribute to effective social policy and also to an understanding of the possible limits of such policy.